Top Projects of 2017: Treasure Island Center

The concrete, fortress-like construction of the former Macy’s store in downtown St. Paul at first appeared to discourage redevelopment hopes.

But the building’s solid, early 1960s structure — including a grid of concrete columns 3 feet in diameter — turned out to be ideal for the 540,000-square-foot, mixed-use development now known as Treasure Island Center and for the building’s crowning feature, an enclosed rooftop hockey rink.

The rink serves as the Minnesota Wild’s practice home, hosts Hamline University’s hockey teams and offers 5,500 hours of community use a year. Treasure Island Center, with office, medical and retail tenants, is expected to draw more than 600,000 visitors a year.

“The spark of having a vision for the building made it all come together,” said Bill Hickey, principal at Collaborative Design Group, a Minneapolis-based architecture and engineering firm. “The building was more than structured to take all the weight.”

That includes the rink, the associated equipment and the bed of concrete and Geofoam supporting it, Hickey said. Another challenge was making sure the rink enclosure would withstand swirling downtown winds.

(Submitted photo)

Lee Krueger, president of the St. Paul Port Authority, gets credit for realizing that an ice arena could fit on the top floor of the five-story building. The Port Authority bought the building after Macy’s 2013 departure.

The authority’s nonprofit funding arm, Capital City Properties, formed a joint venture with Minneapolis-based developer Hempel Co., which owns the Treasure Island Center building. The Prairie Island Indian Community, the naming-rights sponsor, based the title on its Treasure Island Resort and Casino.

“A lot of people didn’t think it could happen,” said Randy McKay, a principal at Hempel Cos., who committed to the project the day Krueger introduced it to him in February 2016. “I made the decision on that day that I was going to do whatever I could to make this happen. It needed to happen.”